I’m going home
And when I want to go home, I’m going mobile
Well I’m gonna find a home on wheels, see how it feels,
Goin’ mobile
Keep me moving
Going Mobile (The Who, Who’s Next, 1971)
Pete Townshend was writing about a different type of “mobile” at the time, but that doesn’t matter, I’m prepared to exploit even the slightest opportunity to refer to one of the greatest albums ever. If you haven’t listened to Who’s Next yet, don’t waste any more time. Stop reading this and do the decent thing.
On the other hand, if, like many regular readers of this blog, you’re quite familiar with the album and its delights, then read on. For the purpose of this post is actually shown in the diagram below:
Taken from Good Magazine, it looks at the best and the worst countries seen from the specific perspectives of internet access and mobile handsets in use. You can see the original chart here.
I found three aspects of the chart intriguing:
- One, the mobile statistics seemed far more revealing than the internet ones, overall.
- Two, there were some unexpected names in the mobile top 10. For example, I was not expecting to see Antigua and Barbuda there, particularly when there is no other Caribbean country represented.
- Three, the mobile bottom 10 made very depressing reading. Too high a correlation between the lack of freedom, economic weakness and mobile scarcity. There is more here than a simple digital divide argument.
I need to spend more time on it before I comment further, but felt that a number of you would be interested in the information even at this stage.